


True Purpose

by AlexandraLynch



Category: Arthurian Legend
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-15
Updated: 2010-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-13 16:55:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexandraLynch/pseuds/AlexandraLynch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The purpose of a queen is to be ever humble, temperate, and charitable, and God will bless her in all ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	True Purpose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Thanks to SophiaP and Holly for beta reading.

She wanted him the moment she saw him. And wasn’t it so fortunate that he was the High King, and that he wanted her too? She was too smart to give anything away before the long day of masses and feasting, and the moment where he set the crown of the consort on her head, and named her his queen. One thing yet to do, and she smiled, thinking of the things that her nurse had told her privately. No fear of him, still with an adolescent gawkiness about his joints, the man he almost was in his shoulders and his voice. He was hers, after all, and she was his. When he slid his robe from his shoulders, she blushed, but it was the flush of desire, not modesty.

No, the bedding was right, too right to be anything but blessed of God. As she rolled her hips to receive him, she thought of their baby, and shivered in rightness. Yes. This would bring them sons, strong sons to sit on the throne after him, daughters to bind the barons and border kingdoms to them. And he was so lovely, her husband, dark hair and blue eyes, blue as the skies above. He could still blush at an earthy joke, and she laughed at him, shrieking in pretended terror as he knocked her backward onto the bed and they mated like cats, with growls and teeth. Her ladies clucked over the teethmarks in her shoulder. She just smiled. The honeymoon passed, sweet as mead, as intoxicating, and they must part to their separate spheres; his to rule, hers to her ladies, her stitching, and to the children that would be.

 

Guinevere realized that time had passed, and she still bled every month in the dark of the moon. Time passed stitching and gossiping with her ladies, time passed in the dark of night laughing and tumbling in bed with her husband, time when the child should have taken root within her. Time, how much time? Too much time.  
She wept that night, and Arthur gathered her into his arms. “What is wrong, that we do not create a child?” she asked him.  
“It is in God’s hands,” he said, and there was a silence behind his words that she found troubling.

“Surely a flaw in you or me, or the pairing,” said Guinevere, and he sighed.

“Well, it’s not in me. I’ve a bastard, from before our marriage. I….didn’t want to tell you,” he added lamely. “I thought it would not matter. The entire thing was a mistake, and I’ve confessed and do my penance for it.”

She did not know why she was surprised. Didn’t all men have a bastard somewhere? But it made her worry more, for if he was potent, it would be her fault, her sin, the one thing that a queen must do, the one thing that her will could not give her, the one thing she needed, a son.

She prayed to St. Anne and the Virgin, mothers both, and dutifully ate the foods that would quicken the womb, and wept til she made herself sick when she bled in the dark of the moon, anyway. His will matched hers; he kept coming to her every night, planting his seed in her, they both praying it would take root. There was no laughter in their bed, now. He went to her as a duty, and withdrew to sleep in his own bed at night. At least he had no leman to point up her barrenness. No other bastards threatened.

He sent her on pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin, hoping. She laid herself there, cheek against the cold flagstones, and breathed the words half aloud. Mother, please. Whatever you want, whatever they tell me, only give me a son! But there was no answer, and at length she rose, and processed solemnly to her place for the Mass. The eyes of the statue were remote and blank above her gold-embroidered robes. The trebles of the boys in the choir sounded like angels. What did angels know of the needs of women?

 

When she returned, she looked down at the men practicing arms in the courtyard. Her husband was still the best among them, laughing as he handed helm and gauntlets to waiting squires, clapping the Duke of Clarence on his shoulder. The squire with the helm looked up to Guinevere’s window, and she saw her husband’s blue eyes, his stride, and shivered. “Who holds his helm?” she said to the lady nearest her.

“Tis the son of the king’s sister, the Count of Harlech he is, and promises to be a fair knight in a few years.”

She avoided talking to the Duchess of Orkney that night, and her eyes kept going to the boy who attended on the king. Her husband’s smile flashed on his lips as he plotted mischief with the other squires, and it stabbed her to the heart. Older than their marriage. Got, God and the saints, on his sister! And she there, and he as well!

Her husband had grown out a beard. It made him look older, less the lad she’d married, and he showed reserve even in the bed, keeping words behind his teeth and secrets in his gaze. He fasted on the feast days, gave generously to the church, and she matched it. Was his the sin that caused God to withhold the babies? How unjust, how inevitable, that a woman suffered for a man’s sins. Was it hers, her intemperance, her temper, her pride? And should the kingdom suffer for lack of an heir?

She bled again, and wept, and blotted her eyes on her sleeve. She threaded her needle. Let it be, then, stop fighting, and let it be in God’s hands in God’s time. She had nothing else to do now, but stitch. She made his shirts, like a good wife should do, and constantly watched that she fell not into the sins of pride, nor of intemperance of word or deed, food or drink, or of uncharity to any.

But she would have no pregnant women about her, and sent the Count of Harlech and his mother to Orkney. As she left, the Duchess of Orkney met her eyes and smiled, then drew up her hood and turned away. The cavalcade moved out of the yard. Guinevere turned from the window, and contemplated secret thoughts of her own.


End file.
